The Bosque Redondo Memorial at Fort Sumner State Monument solemnly remembers the dark days of suffering from 1863 to 1868 when the U.S. Military persecuted and imprisoned 9,500 Navajo (the Diné) and 500 Mescalero Apache (the N’de) on a reservation known as Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner, New Mexico— an area that encompassed 1,600 square miles (over one million acres).

The Bosque Redondo Memorial celebrates these two cultures’ dignity, resilience, endurance, courage and strength, in the face of extreme hardship, isolation, sickness and death, to emerge from Bosque Redondo to become the admired and proud people they are today.

We invite you to walk with us as we look into the Navajo and Mescalero Apache cultures and trace the history of the events that led to their terrible incarceration at Bosque Redondo, their incredible survival, and emotional return to their respective homelands.

Tour with us and learn about the Bosque Redondo Memorial that “remembers their past... and celebrates their future.”

“The Bosque Redondo Memorial mission is to respectfully interpret the history of two cultures, the Diné (Navajo) and the
N’de (Mescalero Apache) during the United States government’s military campaign of ethnic persecution in the 1860’s.”